France is known worldwide for its wine, food and culture, but under its new president, the French are aiming to be the new global hub for tech startups.

President Emmanuel Macron has said he wants to build a version of Silicon Valley in France. His administration has launched pro-business initiatives that are loosening government restrictions and encouraging entrepreneurs to launch their startups in the country.

“The tradition has been in Europe and in France to invest in big, traditional companies and not specifically [in] tech startups. So we will dedicate a €10 billion fund to the investment in tech startups in France,” said Mounir Mahjoubi, France’s Secretary of State for Digital Affairs.

Both public and private investments will factor into Macron’s vision of France as a “country of unicorns” — the term popularly used for tech startups valued at $1 billion or more, said Mahjoubi, who recently was in New York City for “La French Touch” conference, where he discussed France’s strategy for attracting the tech world’s best and brightest.

In the French tech world, all eyes are on the privately financed Station F, which is set to open this summer in Paris. Billed as the world’s biggest startup campus, the 34,000-square-meter space already has major tech companies like Microsoft, Facebook and Ubisoft signed on. The companies will develop their products, as well as host and mentor startup founders in incubator programs. One thousand individual startups are expected to set up shop at Station F.

Seeking global appeal

Silicon Valley has attracted tech talent from all over the world. Now France hopes to do the same for those beyond its borders. Initiatives like the “French Tech Ticket” and more recent “French Tech Visa” are designed to bring startup founders, employees and investors to the country through a combination of mentorships, grants and subsidized work spaces. The French Tech Visa fast-tracks a process for participants to obtain a renewable, four-year residence permit.

Not to be left out are the locals in France’s poorer, outer suburbs, the banlieue. The new administration is aiming for social diversity through inclusion initiatives that foster entrepreneurship, said Mahjoubi.

“We decided to create hubs in the private area[s] of France,” said Mahjoubi. “There might be entrepreneurs over there that believe that it’s not for them, because they couldn’t afford to not having a salary for a year of entrepreneurship … we created the condition so they could receive money from the state, to have a salary during these 12 months [to] push their project to the highest level they can.”

Unemployment at 9.5 percent

The encouragement of entrepreneurship is a novel sentiment in a country where traditional attitudes and strict labor laws have long dominated work culture. With a national unemployment rate of 9.5 percent, venturing out on one’s own to start a business can seem too risky.

But with the success of French unicorns like ride-sharing service BlaBlaCar and network provider Sigfox, attitudes appear to be shifting; 68 percent of French people aged 18 to 25 aspire to run their own business one day, according to a 2015 Ernst & Young survey.

“I think the ecosystem, the government, have done a very good job to do some marketing about entrepreneurship and I think it’s very important because when we compare our situation to the U.S., in the U.S. there is a lot of storytelling, everyone is super enthusiast[ic] and it brings a momentum that is super beneficial,” said François Wyss, co-founder of French startup DataBerries.

Funding available

Wyss and his co-founders recently secured $16 million in their first round of funding for his digital marketing startup.

“There is a lot of funding now in France, so it’s great. We have the chance to have world-class engineers, which are far cheaper than in the U.S. So a lot of companies are developing their core product and R&D in France before exporting it overseas,” said Wyss.

“French tech is all about having roots in France and having a vision for the world,” said Mahjoubi. “The French tech startup scene is an international startup scene.”
…

Facebook Inc. said Thursday that it had completed a second test of an unmanned aircraft designed to someday beam internet access to remote parts of the planet, and unlike in the first test, the drone did not crash.

Facebook plans to develop a fleet of drones powered by sunlight that will fly for months at a time, communicating with each other through lasers and extending internet connectivity to the ground below.

The company called the first test, in June 2016, a success after it flew above the Arizona desert for 1 hour, 36 minutes, three times longer than planned. It later said the drone had also crashed moments before landing and had suffered a damaged wing.

The second test occurred on May 22, Martin Luis Gomez, Facebook’s director of aeronautical platforms, said in a blog post. The aircraft flew for 1 hour, 46 minutes before landing near Yuma, Arizona, with only “a few minor, easily repairable dings,” he said.

Facebook engineers had added “spoilers” to the aircraft’s wings to increase drag and reduce lift during the landing approach, Gomez said.
…

Malawi and the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) launched an air corridor Thursday to test the effectiveness of drones in humanitarian emergencies and other development uses, the first project of its kind in Africa.

Landlocked Malawi, which suffers periodic crop failures and is prone to floods, is frequently in need of food and other aid, and limited road access in many of its rural areas makes it difficult to get help to needy communities.

“Drone technology has many potential applications. … One that we have already tested in Malawi is to transport infant blood samples to laboratories for HIV testing,” UNICEF Malawi Resident Representative Johannes Wedenig said at the launch in Kasungu, 100 km (60 miles) from the capital Lilongwe.

The test corridor is centered at the Kasungu Aerodrome, with a 40-kilometer radius and focusing on three areas: generating aerial images of crisis situations, using drones to extend Wi-Fi or mobile phone signals across difficult terrain in emergencies, and delivering low-weight emergency supplies.

“The launch of the testing corridor is particularly important to support transportation and data collection where land transport infrastructure is either not feasible or difficult during emergencies,” Malawian Minister of Transport Jappie Mhango told Reuters.
…

Why is Amazon spending nearly $14 billion for Whole Foods ? One reason: People who buy yoga mats and fitness trackers on Amazon might also like grapes, nuts and other healthy items at the organic grocery chain.

In short, the deal stands to net Amazon a wealth of data-driven insights into how shoppers behave offline — insights that are potentially very lucrative.

To be sure, there are plenty of other benefits to the combination. Amazon will derive steady revenue from more than 460 Whole Foods stores; it can also introduce robots and other automation technologies to cut costs and improve the bottom line. But ultimately, Amazon wants to sell even more goods and services to both online and offline shoppers — including stuff they might not even realize they need.

Amazon has been quiet on its specific plans so far, but analysts are enthusiastic about the possibilities. “This will be a fun time for Amazon,” said Ryne Misso of the Market Track retail research firm in Chicago. “They are introducing a whole new set of shopper profiles that span grocery stores and durables.”

The tracking

Amazon is a pro at using data on past shopping and browsing to prod you to buy more. The home page, for instance, offers quick access to recently viewed items and suggests products “inspired by your shopping trends.” Amazon sends emails about price cuts on items you’ve searched for but haven’t bought — yet.

Brian Handly, CEO of the mobile analytics firm Reveal Mobile in Raleigh, North Carolina, said that while Amazon doesn’t necessarily have better artificial-intelligence capabilities than its rivals, it has scale in the number of shoppers and variety of businesses it has.

Whole Foods can help by giving Amazon a better understanding of what people do at physical retail stores, where 90 percent of worldwide retail spending still happens, according to eMarketer.

Amazon could learn whether a particular customer tends to come once a month to stock up, or make smaller and shorter visits more frequently. Wi-Fi hotspots in stores might collect unique signals emanating from smartphones to figure out which aisles customers spend the most time in. Same with sensors on product shelves, something Amazon is currently testing at a convenience store in Seattle.

“They will break that data down to build stories about their consumers,” Misso said.

All this might feel creepy, but it’s something Amazon already does and does well online. Larry Ponemon, who runs the Ponemon Institute privacy think tank, said he personally would find tracking of his self-described unhealthy eating habits “very creepy.” But he doesn’t expect any consumer backlash because Amazon and Whole Foods have both earned a high level of trust and loyalty.

Reconfiguring the store

To make stores more profitable, Amazon could push customers to order lower-profit bulk items such as detergent and toilet paper over the internet. That would free up store space for higher-profit items, such as perishables and ready-to-heat prepared meals.

Amazon’s challenge will be to “separate the profitable businesses that can be better done online and the profitable businesses that can be better done at retail,” said Larry Light, CEO of the brand consulting firm Arcature in Delray Beach, Florida.

Amazon might find that some items sell better at some locations than others. It can stock just the most popular items at each location; other items are just a click away for home delivery. It’s an approach Amazon is already taking at its eight physical bookstores.

Handly said that even if Amazon can’t get rid of every lower-profit item on shelves, it can use data to figure out ways to drive more customers to those aisles.

Beyond groceries

Amazon will be able to use grocery data to drive other purchases as well. Say you buy a lot of ingredients typically found in Asian recipes. Amazon might then suggest a Thai or Japanese cookbook. It might also recommend a new rice cooker.

It works the other way, too. If you just watched a Mexican food show on Amazon video, Amazon might point you to deals on avocados and perhaps offer subscriptions for regular deliveries of tortillas and canned beans. Or it might automate a grocery shopping list based on a chosen recipe on your Kindle e-reader.

Just bought some camping equipment? Amazon might offer granola bars and other ready-to-eat meals for your hikes. Likewise, someone who just bought a fitness tracker might be in the market for more produce.

Implications for the industry

Walmart remains the leading retailer overall and has its own huge stake in groceries; its retail revenue is more than three times that of Amazon, even with Whole Foods included. Yet it’s on the defensive. To beef up its online operations, Walmart has gone on a spending spree for e-commerce companies such as Jet, Bonobos, ModCloth and Moosejaw. Analysts say these companies should help Walmart get into the data game as well.

“The real challenge of Walmart is they recognize that technology can be bought and technical expertise can be bought,” Light said.

But playing catch-up is “harder than just building it into your company as a core part of the company’s DNA,” said Brent Franson, CEO of Euclid Analytics, a San Francisco company looking to bring data analysis to physical stores. “Amazon has the benefit from Day One of architecting a business that is data-driven, out of the gate.”
…

It’s six o’clock in the evening, Saw Ku Do reviews his English lessons shortly after finishing an 11-hour shift serving food and sweeping the floor at the tea shop where he works.

“Dog, cat, pig,” he said while looking at his notebook. Saw Ku Do, age 15, only has a second grade education. He dropped out of school to go to work to help support his family. He says his parents are day laborers and struggle to take care of their six children. “It’s not that I didn’t want to stay in school but I felt sorry for my parents,” Saw Ku Do said. “When we are broke we have to borrow money and have to repay with interest so it’s very difficult.”

Saw Ku Do said he gets one day off every other week and makes the equivalent of about 60 U.S. dollars per month. He sends most of it home to his parents who live in a village about eight hours away from Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial capital.

His story is a common one across Myanmar, also known as Burma, where more than a quarter of the population is impoverished. One out of five children ages 10 to 17 goes to work instead of school to help support their families. Many of them move away from small villages to work in tea shops in Myanmar’s cities. At night they often sleep on top of tables in their tea shops or on a piece of cardboard that’s spread out on the floor.

Child labor laws

Myanmar has laws prohibiting children under the age of 14 from working and until 16, they’re not allowed to work more than four-hours per day. However, enforcement is lax.

But while these kids often left the classroom years ago, there’s a program that’s bringing class to some of them.

It’s the Myanmar Mobile Education Project also known as myME. The program teaches subjects including math and English plus vocational training in fields such as hospitality and tailoring. Three nights a week, Saw Ku Do’s tea shop is converted into a makeshift classroom. “I hope to improve my education so I can have a better job,” he said.

The goal of myME is to help these tea shop workers get an education and skills so they’re not stuck in these low paying jobs for the rest of their lives. MyME trained Naw Aye Aye Naing, 20, to be a tailor. She now works at a boutique clothing store earning double what some tea shop workers make.

“MyME improved my life a lot,” she said.

The program’s executive director is Tim Aye-Hardy, a Myanmar native who moved to the United States in 1989. “When I came back to this country in 2012 and ‘13 I started to notice a bunch of young people who are on the streets at these tea shops, restaurants instead of in school that’s what really triggered me,” Aye-Hardy said. “I started asking questions: Why are they not in school? Why are so many kids out there?”

Myanmar’s economy and education system were crippled during nearly 50 years of military rule. The country has been undergoing political and economic changes during the past several years.

Climbing out of poverty

MyME’s annual $200,000 budget comes from private donations. The program teaches about 500 workers at 35 tea shops across Myanmar. But that’s just a small fraction of the more than one-million child workers in this country. “If we don’t help them they’ll never be able to climb out of this trap and then they might be so poor that their kids will also have to quit school to work just like they did,” Aye-Hardy said.

In Saw Ku Do’s English class, his teacher asks him what his favorite animal is. “It is a cat,” he replies.

Saw Ku Do dreams of owning his own business when he’s older. Saw Ku Do says he and his coworkers feel lucky to be part of myME. “If there’s no myME we will be stuck this way,” he said. “If we know more through myME we can get a new job.”

 
…

From water taxis that “fly” on hydrofoils to aircraft wings and cutting-edge car steering wheels, the America’s Cup has produced technology with potential far beyond its “foiling” catamarans.

With their focus on carbon fiber and aerodynamics, the teams that fought for the America’s Cup attracted partners including planemaker Airbus and automotive groups BMW and Land Rover who were keen to learn from them.

One area where this is likely to have an impact is in harnessing “foiling” technology, where the America’s Cup boats “fly” above the water on foils, cutting water resistance.

“Foiling in small electric boats will most likely appear on rivers in major cities. We are just at the beginning of the foiling adventure,” Pierre Marie Belleau, head of Airbus Business Development, who managed its partnership with Larry Ellison’s Oracle Team USA, told Reuters.

The space-age catamarans used in the 35th America’s Cup, which ended in victory for Emirates Team New Zealand this week, can sail at maximum speeds of 50 knots (92.6 kilometers per hour) and have more in common with flying than sailing.

For Jaguar Land Rover, which sponsored British sailor Ben Ainslie’s attempt to win the cup, the relationship is a strategic one with a focus on technology and innovation.

“We don’t just get our logo onto a sail,” Mark Cameron, the company’s Experiential Marketing Director, said by telephone, adding that the carmaker would be providing more designers to help Land Rover BAR with technology for their next campaign.

Land Rover produced a special steering wheel for Ainslie to use in the America’s Cup, with in-built gear shift paddles that allowed him to adjust the catamaran’s “flight” levels.

The relationship is similar between BMW and Oracle Team USA, with the German automaker focused on areas including the electronics in the wheel used by skipper Jimmy Spithill, the development of carbon fiber used to make the boat and its components, and the aerodynamic testing.

“We like to think of ourselves more as a partner than a sponsor. We have a very strong carbon fiber relationship,” Ian Robertson, who is the BMW management board member responsible for sales and brand, told Reuters between races.

“This is a dynamic sport that is developing fast. … It’s moving quickly just like the car industry is moving quickly. It’s all changing,” Robertson said.

Plane sailing?

The America’s Cup catamarans use similar aerodynamics and load calculations to power their wings as commercial aircraft, which has led some skippers such as Spithill to become pilots.

Airbus is now considering applying the design and method of Oracle’s foils to the tips of aircraft, Belleau said, adding that this would need a two- to four-year certification process and require it to change its production method.

Airbus has also created a new generation of Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) microchips that were originally developed for the wings of its test aircraft and then adapted on board the Oracle boat to measure the wind speed and direction at all points on its almost 25-meter-high wing sail.

The sensors make it easier to tell if the wing sails are set efficiently, as wind speed and direction can vary from the top to bottom of the 25-meter wing of the America’s Cup boats — technology that could become standard in the marine leisure industry to replace less reliable wind instruments.

“I would be very surprised if this MEMS technology does not become standard in order to replace the classic anemometer,” Belleau said.

The Airbus A350-1000, one of Airbus’ twin-aisle, wide-body jetliners, is also flying every day using new instrumentation developed through the partnership.

Oracle used Airbus’ 3D printing and manufacturing process to produce stronger and lighter parts that Airbus has started to use on aircraft to replace titanium and aluminum.

“In 10 years from now … this technology will spread and will be on all the sailing boats in the market,” Belleau said. “In addition to the sporting competition, there is still this technological competition. … The story is not finished.”
…

In the two years leading up to June 29, 2007, when Apple’s iPhone went on sale, company co-founder Steve Jobs and a select team were hard at work secretly designing what would become a global game changer. 

The initiative even had a code name, “Project Purple.” By all accounts, the project was pained. 

Inside a secure room, a collection of super smart techies, ate, slept, worked way beyond the typical eight hour day, fought and, at times overthought, the design of this new slick mobile device.

​Before that day, flip phones, Blackberries and even the occasional pager were commonplace.

Pay phones were rarer still.

Photo gallery: America’s love affair with the ever-evolving phone

Ten years later, Jobs is no longer with us, having passed away in 2011.

But most of the public is hunched over a hand-held device, iPhone or not, accessing the internet, watching videos on demand, and conducting mobile banking. 

Time magazine published the final public video appearance of Jobs before he died after a 10-year battle with pancreatic cancer.

Apple, of course, is still redesigning, and hopefully improving upon, that first, innovative cell phone.

Later this year, the iPhone 8 will be released amid much speculation and apparent premature leaks. 
…

A new cyber virus spread from Ukraine to wreak havoc around the globe on

Wednesday, crippling thousands of computers, disrupting ports from Mumbai to Los Angeles and halting production at a chocolate factory in Australia.

The virus is believed to have first taken hold on Tuesday in Ukraine where it silently infected computers after users downloaded a popular tax accounting package or visited a local news site, national police and international cyber experts said.

More than a day after it first struck, companies around the world were still wrestling with the fallout while cybersecurity experts scrambled to find a way to stem the spread.

Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk said it was struggling to process orders and shift cargoes, congesting some of the 76 ports around the world run by its APM Terminals subsidiary.

U.S. delivery firm FedEx Corp said its TNT Express division had been significantly affected by the virus, which also wormed its way into South America, affecting ports in Argentina operated by China’s Cofco.

The malicious code locked machines and demanded victims post a ransom worth $300 in bitcoins or lose their data entirely, similar to the extortion tactic used in the global WannaCry ransomware attack in May.

More than 30 victims paid up but security experts are questioning whether extortion was the goal, given the relatively small sum demanded, or whether the hackers were driven by destructive motives rather than financial gain.

Hackers asked victims to notify them by email when ransoms had been paid but German email provider Posteo quickly shut down the address, a German government cybersecurity official said.

Ukraine, the epicenter of the cyber strike, has repeatedly accused Russia of orchestrating attacks on its computer systems and critical power infrastructure since its powerful neighbor annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014.

The Kremlin, which has consistently rejected the accusations, said on Wednesday it had no information about the origin of the global cyberattack, which also struck Russian companies such as oil giant Rosneft and a steelmaker.

“No one can effectively combat cyber threats on their own, and, unfortunately, unfounded blanket accusations will not solve this problem,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

ESET, a Slovakian company that sells products to shield computers from viruses, said 80 percent of the infections detected among its global customer base were in Ukraine, with Italy second hardest hit with about 10 percent.

Eternal blue

The aim of the latest attack appeared to be disruption rather than ransom, said Brian Lord, former deputy director of intelligence and cyber operations at Britain’s GCHQ and now managing director at private security firm PGI Cyber.

“My sense is this starts to look like a state operating through a proxy … as a kind of experiment to see what happens,” Lord told Reuters on Wednesday.

While the malware seemed to be a variant of past campaigns, derived from code known as Eternal Blue believed to have been developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), experts said it was not as virulent as May’s WannaCry attack.

Security researchers said Tuesday’s virus could leap from computer to computer once unleashed within an organization but, unlike WannaCry, it could not randomly trawl the internet for its next victims, limiting its scope to infect.

Bushiness that installed Microsoft’s latest security patches from earlier this year and turned off Windows file-sharing features appeared to be largely unaffected.

There was speculation, however, among some experts that once the new virus had infected one computer it could spread to other machines on the same network, even if those devices had received a security update.

After WannaCry, governments, security firms and industrial groups advised businesses and consumers to make sure all their computers were updated with Microsoft security patches.

Austria’s government-backed Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) said “a small number” of international firms appeared to be affected, with tens of thousands of computers taken down.

Security firms including Microsoft, Cisco’s Talos and Symantec said they had confirmed some of the initial infections occurred when malware was transmitted to users of a Ukrainian tax software program called MEDoc.

The supplier of the software, M.E.Doc denied in a post on Facebook that its software was to blame, though Microsoft reiterated its suspicions afterwards.

“Microsoft now has evidence that a few active infections of the ransomware initially started from the legitimate MEDoc updater process,” it said in a technical blog post.

Russian security firm Kaspersky said a Ukrainian news site for the city of Bakhumut was also hacked and used to distribute the ransomware to visitors, encrypting data on their machines.

Corporate Chaos

A number of the international firms hit have operations in Ukraine, and the virus is believed to have spread within global corporate networks after gaining traction within the country.

Shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk, which handles one in seven containers shipped worldwide, has a logistics unit in Ukraine.

Other large firms affected, such as French construction materials company Saint Gobain and Mondelez International Inc, which owns chocolate brand Cadbury, also have operations in the country.

Maersk was one of the first global firms to be taken down by the cyberattack and its operations at major ports such as Mumbai in India, Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Los Angeles on the U.S. west coast were disrupted.

Other companies to succumb included BNP Paribas Real Estate, a part of the French bank that provides property and investment management services.

“The international cyberattack hit our non-bank subsidiary, Real Estate. The necessary measures have been taken to rapidly contain the attack,” the bank said on Wednesday.

Production at the Cadbury factory on the Australian island state of Tasmania ground to a halt late on Tuesday after computer systems went down.

Russia’s Rosneft, one of the world’s biggest crude producers by volume, said on Tuesday its systems had suffered “serious consequences” but oil production had not been affected because it switched to backup systems.
…

The U.N.’s disarmament chief warned Wednesday that terrorists and non-state actors are using the so-called dark web to seek the tools to make and deliver weapons of mass destruction.

“The global reach and anonymity of the dark web provides non-state actors with new marketplaces to acquire dual-use equipment and materials,” U.N. High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu told a meeting of the U.N. Security Council.

The dark web is a part of the internet that requires special software to access and allows users and website operators to remain anonymous or untraceable, making it appealing to criminals, terrorists and pedophiles.

Nakamitsu said that dual-use items are complicating their efforts to address the risks posed by WMD.

“We must keep in mind that many of the technologies, goods and raw materials required for developing weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery derive from legitimate commercial applications that benefit many people,” she said. Nakamitsu added that it is important to strike the right balance between collective security and commercial opportunity with preventing proliferation.

Weapons of mass destruction include nuclear, chemical, radiological and biological weapons.

“While there are still significant technical hurdles that terrorist groups need to overcome to effectively use weapons of mass destruction, a growing number of emerging technologies could make this barrier easier to cross,” Nakamitsu said.

In addition to the dark web, she said the use of drones and 3-D printers by non-state actors are also growing concerns. Nakamitsu urged intensified international cooperation to make it harder for terrorists and criminals to illegally traffic sensitive materials.

Chemical weapons

Terrorists have already used poison gas in at least one deadly attack.

In Syria, Islamic State used mustard gas on civilians in the town of Marea in August 2015, according to a U.N.-authorized investigation last year. (The same investigators also concluded that the Syrian government carried out at least two chemical weapons attacks on civilians living in rebel-controlled areas in 2014 and 2015.)

“The use by non-state actors of chemical weapons is no longer a threat, but a chilling reality,” Joseph Ballard, a senior official with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) told council members.

Ballard said the OPCW is working to enhance the security of the global supply chain of dual-use materials and technologies, including working with international customs officials. He said the organization also works closely with the international chemical industry, to ensure that toxic chemicals do not fall into the wrong hands.
…

A global cyberattack disrupted operations Wednesday at India’s largest container port, adding to the headaches of governments and businesses affected by so-called ransomware code that takes a user’s data hostage until the victim agrees to pay for its release.

The problems at Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai involved a terminal run by Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk.  The company had said Tuesday as the attack was spreading largely in Europe and the United States that the malicious code was affecting terminals “in a number of ports.”

Australia’s Cyber Security Minister Dan Tehan told reporters Wednesday that officials have not yet confirmed the same computer virus was responsible for ransomware attacks on two Australian companies, but that “all indications would point to” that being the case.

Ukraine targeted first

Banks, government offices and airports in Ukraine were among the first to report the cyberattack.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Pavlo Rozenko tweeted a photo of his black computer screen, saying the government’s headquarters had been shut down.

Other international firms that reported being affected include America’s Merck pharmaceutical company, Russia’s Rosneft oil giant, British advertising giant WPP and French industrial group Saint-Gobain.

“We confirm our company’s computer network was compromised today as part of global hack. Other organizations have also been affected,” Merck said on Twitter.

A U.S. National Security Council spokesman said the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and other agencies are “working with public and private, domestic and international partners to respond to this event and provide technical information for prevention and remediation.”

“Individuals and organizations are discouraged from paying the ransom as this does not guarantee access will be restored,” the spokesman added.

Ransom demands 

Europol’s European Cybercrime Center has told anyone affected by Tuesday’s attack to report the crime to national police and encouraged them not to pay any ransom requested by hackers.

“What is interesting about this particular case is that the email system that is supposed to be used to deposit the Bitcoin ransoms has actually been disabled, so the hackers in this case may not get what they bargained for,” Cedric Leighton, who operates his own crisis management consultancy, told VOA.

WATCH: Related video report

Eternal Blue

The computer virus used in the attack includes code known as Eternal Blue, a tool developed by the NSA that exploited Microsoft’s Windows operating system and which was published on the internet in April by a group called Shadow Brokers.  Microsoft released a patch to protect systems from the exploit in March.

A similar ransomware attack last month named “WannaCry” affected computer systems in 150 countries.

Tim Rawlins, director of the Britain-based cybersecurity consultancy NCC Group, says these attacks continue to happen because people have not been keeping up with effectively patching their computers.

“This is a repeat WannaCry type of outbreak and it really comes down to the fact that people are not focusing on what they should be focusing on, the very simple premise of patching your systems,” Rawlins told VOA.

WATCH: Ransomeware basics facts
…

International business in the United States and Europe, as well as Ukrainian state institutions, were among those affected by cyberattacks on Tuesday. The virus locked digital files and demanded payment for help to restore access to them. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
…